THANKSGIVING

 

Thanksgiving has always been a special day for me, especially when I was young.

Our family lived in Alexandria, Virginia until the summer of 1962.  Every Thanksgiving, we would pack up the car and drive to NC, specifically Winston-Salem, the tobacco capital of the USA.

The trip lasted about 5-6 hours as I recall and as we got closer to Winston-Salem, when the windows of the car were rolled down, you could actually smell the tobacco in the air.

Thanksgiving in Winston-Salem was a real treat.  We all sat at a long dining room table that held all the Thanksgiving dishes in the middle.  One by one these dishes were passed around while my grandfather, my dad's father, cut the turkey.

We had everything that you could imagine in terms of side dishes to go with the turkey like casseroles, rice, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, peas, lima beans, salad, sweet potatoes, etc.

The day after Thanksgiving, all our relatives would get together and rent a meeting hall in a nearby park and all the families would gather there and bring their leftovers.

While my memories are a little foggy, I would suspect that about 150 relatives would show up, most of whom I had no idea who they were.  These relatives would represent both my mother's and father's side of the family.

It was a very memorable time that our entire family/relatives lost sight of as we all got older.